1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid discharge head for discharging liquid, and more particularly to an ink jet recording head that discharges ink to a recorded medium for performing recording.
2. Description of the Related Arts
Examples of using a liquid discharge head for discharging liquid include an ink jet recording method in which ink is discharged to a recorded medium for performing recording.
General ink discharging methods used for the ink jet recording method include a method in which an electrothermal transducing device such as a heater is used as a discharge energy generating element used for discharging an ink droplet, and a method in which a piezoelectric device such as a piezoelectric element is used. Both methods can control the discharge of ink droplet by an electrical signal.
The ink jet recording head is mounted to a recording apparatus in such a manner that the surface of its discharge port is opposite to the recorded medium. Some of the recording apparatuses have a configuration in which scanning is made inside of the recording apparatus according to the conveyance of the recorded medium, while some of the recording apparatuses include recording means over a whole range of a recording width of the recorded medium.
There have widely been known an ink jet recording head having formed on a substrate discharging means such as an ink discharging energy generating element, ink flow path, a discharge port, and the like. Si is often used as a normal substrate, and the recording head is fabricated by forming recording means on the substrate made of Si and cut by a dicing method or the like.
Meanwhile, the cutting face cut by the dicing cut is likely to be chemically affected. Therefore, in order to prevent the exposure of the cutting face, there has been known a method for protecting an element substrate from various external factors such as ink by applying sealing agent (hereinafter referred to as chip-side sealing agent) on the outer periphery of the substrate.
On the other hand, until the ink jet recording head is brought into a used state, means for protecting the discharge port is taken for preventing the clogging of ink filled inside or dryout of the ink in the vicinity of the discharge port, or intrusion of dust, etc., into the discharge port.
As the protecting means described above, a method disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. S61-125851 has been known in which a sealing member having adhesive component laminated on a base is attached, as a tape (hereinafter referred to as “sealing tape”), so as to cover all over the surface of the discharge port.
The sealing tape is attached on the entire region of the discharge port over the chip-side sealing agent.
However, since the chip-side sealing agent described above generally has adhesiveness, only the base of the tape is peeled off due to the adhesiveness of the chip-side sealing agent when the sealing tape is peeled off in the use of a product, whereby it is feared that the adhesive layer of the tape remains on the chip-side sealing agent. The adhesive layer remaining on the chip-side sealing agent moves from the chip-side sealing agent to the discharge port during the restoring operation of discharge such as a wiping on the surface of the discharge port, thereby entailing a problem of clogging the discharge port.